motivation

msam3794

I have joined fitness pal to lose weight. Any motivation would be greatly appreciated a ride my stationary bike for 30 minutes every morning not many calories are being burned. Not sure if this is good. Any tips would be great.

AnnPT77

Hello and welcome!

To be honest, I think motivation as such is kind of a solo sport. For me, that switch in my head needed to flip from "I'd like to lose weight" or "I hope I'll lose weight" to "I'm committed to losing weight".

I'd pretty much always understood that I needed to eat fewer calories, in balance with whatever my activity level was (both exercise and daily life count). I didn't follow through and do the things that needed to be done, until I truly committed to the goal.

To me, "motivation" is about flipping that switch. If I knew how to do it, I'd bottle that, sell it, and make millions.

What I'd say instead: Avoid doing extreme and truly unpleasant things in a rush to lose weight fast. That doesn't usually end well, but does tend to end quickly. What to do?

• Iif you're here to log food and manage calories, log what you eat now, review your diary, look for relatively painless calorie reductions. Eat food you like and find reasonably filling, bonus if it adds up to good overall nutrition.
• Do exercise you find pleasant, ideally fun, but at minimum tolerable and practical. Focus on finding new, permanent routine habits that will gradually take you to a healthy weight, then keep you there long term.
• Think about ways to include more movement in daily life, too. I'm talking about that stuff like "park further from the door, take the stairs" kinds of things - doing those routinely.

For someone like me, with a tendency toward overweight, a good body weight isn't a quick project with an end date. It's forever. The tactics need to be compatible with a busy life.

Is riding your stationary bike daily good? Yes. For most of us, the big value in exercise isn't the extra calories burned - though that's a nice bonus, small though the number may be. The big value is improving our odds of long-term good health, developing fitness that will make lots of daily life activities easier and more manageable, and that sort of thing.

Exercise is good for a body. Picking the right exercise - fun, or at least tolerable - is individual. If it's the bike for now, great, but don't be afraid to experiment with other things. My experience was that it took a bit of discipline at first, but after a while I felt so much better from exercising, and worse if I took too much time off . . . and that helped me keep doing it. That, and the fun. My main exercise is so much fun that I'd do it even if it weren't good for me, but it is.

The average person only burns about 5% of their daily total calories via intentional exercise. That's not much! A truly heavy exerciser might burn 10-15% of their calories in exercise, but it's not going to be much more than that for most people who have non-exercise jobs, home chores, etc. That's just real. That said, I'm not going to turn down those extra calories! 😉

You can lose the weight, I believe and would bet, if you seriously commit to doing it, and keep going, trying different things until something clicks. If your experience is like mine, the quality of life improvement that results will be more than worth the effort it takes to achieve. (BTW, I was overweight/obese for around 30 years. I've been at a healthy weight for around 10 years now, since loss.)

Wishing you success!